Passage III

No Satisfaction

Many people believe that today's rock music lyrics are immoral. Even parents who grew up listening to early rock tunes often need to wear earplugs when recent songs are played. Some parents have been moved by worries about the lyrics' influence on their children to be motivated to seek ways of restricting access of songs they deplore. However, our nation's devotion to freedom of speech creates a dilemma for them: censorship, even in the name of protecting impressionable youth, is still censorship.

Music has been practiced in many nations and historical eras. One possible solution to the censorship dilemma is, to rate albums as we do movies. Ratings for parents a rough guide to the nature of a recording's contents. Recording companies generally are willing to rate their albums. Public officials seem satisfied with ratings as a compromise that mutes controversy. And recording artists remain free to sing whatever they want.

Unfortunately, to adopt a movie-style rating system is to ignore crucial differences between music and movies. For one thing, when teenagers go to a theater, we must buy tickets from a person presumably responsible enough to deny them admission by exclusion if they're underage. Unless we're willing to deputize every sales clerk in every music store, or music ratings won't be enforced. Moreover, rock music, more than film, expresses youthful rebellion. Label an album as one whose contents won't delight Mom or Dad, and there are millions of teens who will acquire it precisely for that reason.

Not surprisingly, there is no satisfactory method for governing rock 'n' roll. Parents can best exert responsibility for their children's listening habits by communicating their concerns to their children. By sharing their insights and values, parents and teens can discover precisely why certain kinds of lyrics provoke disagreement. The process of debate will in itself do more to promote both moral growth and mutual understanding, than any arbitrary system of restraints on what rock fans hear.